Can law and justice be maintained without religion

Can it? What do you think?
In my personal opinion I believe humans are to full of themselves and to arragont to live in a world without something they can put their absolute faith into... But possibly if humans...Evolved, as it were, to be more accepting and overall less violent then possibly it could... (That is, if religion is wrong to begin with).

Its been under religion and religious based law that some of the worst tragedies of human history have and still occur.

True but what I'm trying to say is would the world fall apart without religon? Without something to believe in would people just give up? True that Holy Wars and crusades from the old testement are some of the worst but do they compare to what could happen without any sort of law or order in the world?

But your mixing concepts, religion doesn't equal law and order, nor does belief or faith or interest in life equal or require religion.

They are not dependent upon eachother for existance nor mutually exclusive.

God, love thy neighbor, and "don't be a douche bag and go around hurting and murdering people" are not religious concepts, they are concepts incorporated into religions.

But I will say that no religion is needed to maintain law, order, or justice or sanity etc.

And as long as large organised mainstream religions continue to operate on the premises of exclusivity, judgement, fear, and control, rather than just teaching love, forgiveness, and spirituality.

They will continue to bring harm and actually cause loss of law and justice as they have done and still do.

I guess you would have to look at what kind of structure is placed on Religion. Do people need that structure? Do people need the belief of an afterlife? I would say so. There are people who will believe in religion till their death, regardless of what happens around them. They are asphyxiated on it, they can't breath without it. They have invested too much time into it. People are blind idiots who choose to not see. I actually know a couple from high school who literally saved it till marriage. How fucked is that? Its these simple people who do things like this who need religion. The rest of the world doesn't. Do we really care if we lose these people if religion becomes a passe? I don't and that's because anyone who can obsess about something that is apparently and obviously not true gives rise to extremism. It gives rise to extremism by having followers who will believe anything and do anything even if it is inherently wrong logically. No logic leads to extremism!

Religion is a system of values that bases on (or works against) human nature. It's part of our nature to want to be safe and secure. As long as people agree on a set of values, law and order can be (somewhat) maintained.

'And let us with caution indulge the supposition (the act of supposing or assuming), that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle' – George Washington

Yes rule of order can always be obtained with the barrel of a gun. As it is now.

Religion is baloney! Plain and simple. If you read about the Malthusian model what you will find is that a Christian economist found that wealth was created by having a low birth rate. At the time they did not have birth control so the government told the Christian religion to preach abstinence in order to increase productivity.

Lets not be brainwashed idiots; we do not need religion, religion needs us.

Amen!

So then religion is just a tool of the powerful?

They can be. Certainly the only people able to write on papyrus would be the wealthy at the time. Therefore they must have promoted it in the least.

The roman's changed to christianity because it was a better governing religion that was getting popular at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract

Most religions stem from this theory and then they add in their agenda.

The social contract alone is enough to promote law and order.

Come on, most people don't go to church, they don't pray every night, and when they want to rob from the neighbor it isn't God that stops them, its a felony charge.

I think its pretty obvious, that with out bashing religion int he least bit, you can rationally and logically say that it has nothing to do with law and order. People don't hurt other people because they don't want to start a riot.

Plus, can't you just be forgiven in most religions? Isn't that like, the greatest loop hole ever to do what ever you want?

Religion is used to implant an "inner" directory. Law and Order is the outward expression, something which is externally imposed. One can take religion from the equation but an inner guide must be supplied in another manner. It is a shame that the abuses and misdirections in the name of religion have turned people away from the kernals of truth they built around in the first place.